Path to citizenship expected to be a major component of bipartisan push for overhaul

A key group of senators from both parties will unveil the framework of a broad overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws today, including a pathway to citizenship for more than 11 million unauthorized immigrants.

The detailed, four-page statement of principles will carry the signatures of four Republicans and four Democrats, a bipartisan push that would have been unimaginable just months ago on one of the country’s most emotionally divisive issues.

The document is intended to provide guideposts that would allow legislation to be drafted by the end of March, including a potentially controversial “tough but fair” route to citizenship for those now living in the country illegally.

It would allow unauthorized immigrants with otherwise clean criminal records to quickly achieve probationary legal residency after paying a fine and back taxes.

But they could pursue full citizenship — giving them the right to vote and access to government benefits — only after new measures are in place to prevent a future influx of unauthorized immigrants.

Those would include additional border security, a new program to help employers verify the legal status of their employees and more-stringent checks to prevent immigrants from overstaying visas.

And those unauthorized immigrants seeking citizenship would be required to go to the end of the waiting list to get a green card that would allow permanent residency and eventual citizenship, behind those who had already legally applied at the time of the law’s enactment.

The goal is to balance a fervent desire by advocates and many Democrats to allow unauthorized immigrants to emerge from society’s shadows without fear of deportation with a concern held by many Republicans that doing so would only encourage more illegal immigration.

“We will ensure that this is a successful permanent reform to our immigration system that will not need to be revisited,” the group asserts in its statement of principles.

The framework identifies two groups as deserving of special consideration for a separate and potentially speedier pathway to full citizenship: young people who were brought to the country illegally as minors and agricultural workers whose labor, often at subsistence wages, has long been critical to the nation’s food supply.

It also addresses the need to expand available visas for high-tech workers and promises to make green cards available for those who pursue graduate education in certain fields in the United States.

“We must reduce backlogs in the family and employment visa categories so that future immigrants view our future legal immigration system as the exclusive means for entry into the United States,” the group will declare.

The new proposal marks the most substantive bipartisan step Congress has taken toward new immigration laws since a comprehensive reform bill failed on the floor of the Senate in 2007.

It comes as the White House is gearing up for a renewed push for reform. On Tuesday, President Barack Obama will travel to Las Vegas to urge quick action; he told Hispanic members of Congress at a White House meeting Friday that the issue is his top legislative priority.